Polanski's gamble fails - as the Burnham honeymoon rolls on

Andy Burnham decisively passed the first electoral test of his premiership last night.

Sagal Abdi-Wali won 45% of the vote to retain Sir Keir Starmer's former seat of Holborn and St Pancras for Labour on a reduced majority of 12.4%.

Labour's win in a diverse central London seat, coming a few months after Burnham's own win in the Northern suburban seat of Makerfield, will buttress the prime minister's claim to be a leader who appeals to all parts of the broad Labour coalition.

For the Greens, the failure of Zack Polanski's Westminster gamble will raise searching questions about whether their left populist strategy is still viable in the shadow of a Labour leader who enthuses the voters they have sought to attract.

Polanski achieved the second-best Green by-election performance in the party's history with 32.7%, and reduced Labour's majority in the seat from 30% to 12.4%. He and his party will be disappointed.

This was a strong performance for Labour on several metrics. The decline in Labour's vote share, at just 3.7 points, was well below the average drop of 19.3 points across the four by-elections during Starmer's premiership, where Burnham was not on the ballot.

The drop here was indeed smaller than the average drop in Labour support found during Tony Blair's first term (11.1%).

The Labour to Green swing, at 13.1 points, was well below many of the swings the Greens achieved in the 2024 general election and this May's local elections, and a pale shadow of the 26.5-point swing the party achieved in Gorton and Denton in February.

Crucially, it was substantially below the Labour to Green swing found in the wards of this seat in May, suggesting Labour under Burnham may be winning back some of the voters lost to the Greens under Starmer.

The Greens will be bitterly disappointed not to take this seat. Holborn and St Pancras is full of the kind of voters who find the party most attractive - students, young graduates, private renters and Muslim voters - and the Greens had already shown it could mobilise such voters to deliver victory over Labour in the Gorton and Denton by-election.

They were unable to recreate that performance here, with the Green leader unable to mobilise voters on the scale that Hannah Spencer managed when winning on a high turnout in February.

But the Greens can still take many positives from this performance. This was the second best showing ever in a by-election for a party which, before this year, was only ever a bit part player in such contests. No Green candidate got more than 10.2% of the vote prior to this year, now two candidates have won more than 30%.

Defeat here will nevertheless dent Polanski's authority and raise questions about his approach as Green leader.

This failure in a demographically favourable seat comes in the wake of a long decline in his party's poll standing and in Polanski's personal approval ratings, and shortly after a controversial motion declaring Zionism to be racism was narrowly passed at the Green Party conference, with its leader absent and silent.

Galloway's worst performance

This was also a disappointing contest for a more seasoned left-wing firebrand, the veteran campaigner and former Labour MP George Galloway, standing for the Workers Party. Galloway has twice won upset by-election victories in Labour seats, but the tide was not running his way this time. This time Galloway won just 1.1% and lost his deposit, his worst performance in any Westminster election since he started standing against the Labour Party in 2005.

Positive for Tories

Although they were very much on the margins of this contest, there were cheering signs here for the Conservatives as well. The party's 7% vote was down only slightly on their 2024 performance, putting them well ahead of Reform (5.9%) as the strongest party on the right.

While a single-digit share is hardly barnstorming, it is a big improvement on the last Labour versus Green contest in Gorton and Denton, where the Conservative share fell to just 1.9%, their worst performance in any postwar by-election, or Makerfield, where the party got 2.2%, its second worst ever showing.

Poor showing for Reform and Restore

Reform's 5.9% was by some margin their worst by-election performance in this parliament. Reform will be disappointed to finish behind the Conservatives, but relieved to finish well ahead of Restore.

The newest entrant on the right managed just 2.5% and lost their deposit, perhaps reflecting the very limited appeal of a party whose flagship policy is mass deportation in a seat where half of the resident population was born abroad.

Labour claws back ground in polls

Successfully defending a seat which has returned Labour MPs for generations unbroken should not be a headline-grabbing accomplishment. But for a party bruised by a series of record-breaking collapses in formerly safe seats under Starmer, the return of normal political service under Burnham will come as a major relief.

Labour nearly lost local elections here a few months ago, and the party which almost beat them put up their national leader as candidate. Holding firm in such circumstances is a substantial achievement, and Labour's robust showing against the Green Party leader will boost the morale of Labour MPs in London and elsewhere worried about Green challenges in their own patch.

While it will be cold comfort to the defeated Green leader and his activists, the Greens' success in winning over young progressive voters from Labour has played a major role in forcing a change in the governing party's leadership and approach.

And while Polanski will not be heading to Westminster this year, his performance here underlines that the Greens are not going away. There remains a receptive audience for Polanski's more radical left brand of politics, and that audience remains heavily clustered together in a few dozen Labour-held big city seats, where opportunities will open up if and when Labour stumbles.

That moment may not be long in coming. Labour went into this contest with big advantages which may not last. Their new leader is at the peak of a polling honeymoon.

Positive early impressions typically fade, and events in the coming months will provide voters with many potential reasons to sour on the new prime minister and his party. A budget promising thin gruel is coming soon, followed by a winter of high energy bills. An unstable world and a restive, distrustful electorate will continue to throw up new challenges. The Greens may not be cheering this week, but the ever-changing political climate may shift their way again before long.

(c) Sky News 2026: Polanski's gamble fails - as the Burnham honeymoon rolls on